How to Use Big Marketing Ideas on a Small Budget

The equation for business is simple: (volume x price) – cost = profit. Your goal as a business owner is to increase profit. To increase profit you have three options: reduce costs, increase price or increase volume. Effective marketing is about driving up volume or increasing price.

Driving up volume comes from finding and selling to new customers or selling more frequently to existing customers.

Driving up price comes from increasing the perceived value of a product. Customers tend to attach more value to a recognisable brand, where the product or service is conveniently accessible or where they experience high levels of customer service.

The following 15 marketing tactics provide you with ideas that should enable you to either increase volumes or drive up prices without incurring exorbitant costs. You will never be able to implement all 15 ideas, so pick one to start, implement it and monitor the progress…

Become Known

1. Create alliance partnerships and ride on the shoulders of giants

Sipahh straws are innovative drinking straws that give milk flavour when it passes through the straw. The product was launched in South Africa by Strawtech, a small start-up company with virtually no capital. Strawtech created unprecedented media attention with the launch of its new product by securing a partnership with McDonalds.

Andrew Robinson, the young CEO of Strawtech gave McDonalds the exclusivity of the innovative new product for one month in return for positioning of the Sippah straw on a McDonalds TV and print advertising campaign.

After just one month, the product was known by many of the young target audience and when the straws were ultimately sold in stores, children were already keen to try them out. A number of South African entrepreneurs have created huge awareness for business and themselves by becoming the stars of advertising campaigns for larger corporations.

Nkhensani Manganyi of Stoned Cherrie featured on massive Nokia billboards and the owners of a Joburg City BMW dealership featured in an FNB print, radio and TV advertising campaign. This exposure cost them nothing but was worth a fortune.

Tactic: Identify and partner with a non-competitive company that targets the same customers you do. Do a combined marketing or advertising campaign that benefits both parties.

On closer inspection of the traffic fine, most ‘offenders’ were relieved to find out that the fine was actually an invitation to experience the freedom of a Vespa Scooter for themselves. But some offenders raced off to their nearest police station to protest the fine, not realising that it was a marketing campaign.

Many newspapers, radio stations and magazines caught wind of this gutsy, cheeky but cheap marketing campaign and discussed it on talk shows and in news bulletins, resulting in media coverage worth hundreds of thousands of rands.

What can you do to create a stir that will garner the attention of the media, without destroying your brand or getting you locked away for illegal activity?

Tactic: Do something extravagant, cheeky or courageous to get radio show hosts and journalists talking about your efforts.

3. Speak Out

In 2003 Ciko Thomas and Litha Nkombisa left their cushy corporate jobs to acquire a BMW dealership in the Joburg City Center. Joburg City Auto was making losses when they acquired it yet over the past four years they have been highly effective in turning the business around by substantially growing the customer base.

They have had some good fortune and made some very clever moves to ensure that they acquired and retained customers. Their good fortune came in the form of FNB print, radio and TV adverts featuring “Litha the family man and Litha the business man” as a customer of FNB. One of their clever moves has been to speak about the business at every opportunity.

Ciko speaks at business schools, on the radio and at conferences about the challenge of acquiring and turning around a business. As a black entrepreneur, his story has wide appeal and he tells it with passion and energy. This feeds on itself because the more people hear him speak, the more they want to visit the dealership and buy cars.

Entrepreneurs can effectively market their business by telling its story in public forums. People love hearing entrepreneurial stories and if you are able to tell the story well, you will get lots of free publicity.

Tactic: Craft the story that outlines the development and growth of your business. Include humour, anecdotes and key lessons learned. Let other people such as conference organisers, lecturers and event managers know that you are happy to share the story with others.

Improve Your Offering

4. Be The Best

Nougat used to be just nougat before Sally Williams came along. Now you get nougat and Sally Williams nougat. At the core of the brand that has put South African nougat on the map is a product that evolved from a three year quest for the perfect recipe.

The result is nougat that is considered to be amongst the finest in the world and is in huge demand across Southern Africa. Making a great product or offering a valuable service is at the heart of being successful. Many businesses set out to create a world class product or offer top class service but over time get distracted and lazy and end up offering something that is just ok.

If you are operating on a level of mediocrity, no matter how good your advertising, PR or viral marketing people will eventually stop buying. If you constantly innovate to offer a product or service that is the best of the best, you will be amazed at how easy advertising, PR and all other forms of marketing become. What would it take for you to elevate your product or service to be considered the best in the world.

Tactic: Focus on improving the quality of your product and service until it is not only the best in South Africa but the best in the world.

5. Deliver Quick Turnarounds

“I want it now” is a standard customer motto in the modern culture of instant gratification. Delivering faster can be the simple marketing strategy on which to build your business. iBurst, a wireless internet provider, has achieved good growth by offering wireless internet in 48 hours.

Who would even think of choosing Telkom broadband with a three month waiting list? Scooters pizza has achieved similar success by offering pizza delivery in 39 minutes, or it’s free. Scooters have made taste secondary to the speed of delivery.

In the last six years in an already saturated pizza market they have managed to open over 100 franchises. If you could offer your service or product with faster delivery or in a more convenient location what would that do for your business?

Tactic: Create the fastest delivery time in your industry then commit to delivering quicker than competitors in your marketing material.

6. Customise

“You can have any colour as long as it is black”, was Henry Ford’s answer to a request for the model T to be sold in different colours. This was probably one of the greatest marketing blunders of all time. It cost Ford its position as the number one car manufacturer in the world, forever.

General Motors (GM) trounced Ford by offering a selection of cars for different segments of the market with customisation in colour and design, thereby building a car to meet customers’ needs. This strategy from the beginning of the last century is being redeployed with great success in the new millennium.

Levi jeans launched a made-to-measure programme with great success in 1995. Because every single body is unique in size, proportion and dimension, Levi’s began creating a pair of jeans for specific measurements. All a customer does is visit a designated Levi’s store to be measured by a professional after which they receive a custom-made pair of jeans.

Michael Dell became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company by being the first to sell a customisable computer. How could you customise your product to increasingly meet your customers’ needs?

Tactic: Customise your product; make each product so unique that it fits each customer’s needs perfectly.

7. Offer Focused Choice

When I am travelling abroad, I find it intriguing to sit near the counter in Starbucks and hear the combinations of coffee drinks that are ordered: “Tall skinny vanilla latte with soy milk”, “Short, iced, decaf coffee with whipped cream”. Starbucks has turned coffee shops into a global phenomenon and it has done so partly by offering people a very wide choice in a very small area.

Starbucks’ primary focus is coffee, but it offers hundreds of different variations of coffee, which makes its stores a coffee destination. Few people can argue with the success of Starbucks. Local franchises such as The Fudge Factory with 25 flavors of fudge and Mozart Ice Cream Classics with 38 flavours of ice cream, have succeeded by offering a wide selection as a unique value proposition. You can do the same by focusing your business on offering the largest selection in your industry.

Tactic: Focus on a smaller number of products with a much bigger selection.

8. Bundle Products

Fruit and Veg City has been one of the true entrepreneurial success stories in South Africa in the past 10 years. They get customers to purchase more by bundling products with offers such as: 3 apples for R3,99. These bundles usually offer minor discounts over single purchases but they drive volumes right up as bundled products usually create the impression of value and customers love feeling like they are getting good value.

Tour companies such as African Encounters and Thompson Tours have made the travel buying process far simpler for customers by bundling flights, hotels and transfers into a single purchase from a single vendor.

This streamlines the process for the buyer and the seller. McDonalds bundles products in the form of McMeals. Instead of purchasing just a burger, McDonalds makes it convenient to purchase chips, a burger and a drink. How could you structure your product packages to serve customers better?

Tactic: Could you bundle your product in larger quantities that might be suitable for customers to purchase more. Could you bundle your product with other logical extensions of the product.

Make More Connections

9. Turn Customers Into Agents

Since the inception of Weigh-Less 32 years ago, the brand has continued to grow. An innovative business model beats the competition because it has created a support network around the products and services. Caring group leaders, all of whom are previous Weigh-Less customers, chair weekly meetings providing support for people who are trying to lose weight.

The company’s happy, successful customers are turned into agents to reach into communities and friendship groups, selling the service and helping people lose weight. Honey jewellery, Tupperware and Avon have all grown into substantial businesses by increasing volumes of sales via disbursed networks of self-employed agents, most of whom were customers before becoming agents.

10. Get Customers Talking

Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, as illustrated in the Defending the Caveman example. Yet most businesses do not have a formal systemised referral system. Facebook the incredibly popular social networking website has achieved explosive growth by making referrals its core marketing strategy.

Invite friends and be able to look for your friends amongst other friends. In three years, the site has attracted over 10 million registered users and the 22 year old founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, was offered $1 billion for the company by Yahoo due to the massive user base built up through referrals.

He turned the offer down as he felt the company was undervalued at $1 billion. Referrals and word of mouth advertising has always been and probably always will be the most powerful tool for acquiring new customers.

Tactic: Create a referral system for your business. Start by encouraging customers to tell their friends. Streamline the process for your customers to refer your goods or service, by adding a function on your website where people can recommend or pass along a recommendation or a free gift to their friends.

11. Offer Giveaways

Planet Fitness offers a two week free training voucher for anyone interested in joining. It is obviously easier to sell something that is free of charge than to sell something that costs money. But it is also easier to sell something that costs money once you have people engaged with the product and using it.

Giving something away is a great way to generate prospects, just make sure you know who you are giving the gift to and that you can follow up with a sales call when the time is right. Why do you think so many software companies and web services allow a 30 day free trial?

Free trials are their most important lead for new sales. Just as BMW gives away free test drives to attract potential customers, offer something free to get traffic flowing to your business and convert the traffic to sales.Tactic: Give something away that costs you little or no money. Ideally, make it information based. Make the gift appropriate for your customers to ensure that you are attracting high quality prospects.

Foster Relationships

12. Create A Community

Cyclelab in Fourways, Johannesburg, is way more than a bicycle shop. Andrew McLean, professional cyclist and the founder of Cyclelab has played an integral role in developing the sport of cycling in South Africa and fostering a community of cyclists in Northern Johannesburg.

Cyclelab offers spinning classes, a cycling club, regular rides, weekends away, newsletters, and a coffee shop. All of this increases the number of people who take an interest in cycling in the area and drives up sales in the retail store.

Creating a community around an activity associated with a business enables the business to continually reach potential and existing customers and creates an intimacy that enables the business to push up prices without chasing customers away.

Land Rover creates communities of 4×4 drivers, scrap book shops create communities of scrap book fanatics in their area and Harley Davidson creates communities of middle aged men and women pretending to be tough motorcyclists all over the world.

Tactic: Consider creating a club or organisation linked to the product or service that you sell in your business. Use this as a means to grow interest in the product or service and develop strong relationships with customers.

13. Train Customers

Analysts predicted failure when Apple decided to enter the retail market a few years back.. Today Apple retail stores have the highest sales per square foot of any store in the US. Part of their success has been to empower customers to be effective in using their products.

If you walk past the Apple store in Sandton Square on a Saturday morning you will see a group of Apple users sitting being coached on the use of Apple products and software by one of the in-store experts. These free training sessions get users into the store, empower new users to make the transition from PC to Mac and generally drive up sales.

This strategy has been employed effectively by Apple stores across the world. Could you offer training sessions to customers to coach or empower them to be more effective in using your product or service? If you could, would this give you the opportunity to connect with them more regularly and get them to form a deeper relationship with the company.

Tactic: Offer training to customers to empower them to be more effective in using your product or service.

14. Store & Use Information

The Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) was started just six years ago. The incredible growth of the institution can be attributed directly to the business school’s database. GIBS cleverly began running forum events featuring interesting business speakers early on in the lifecycle of the school.

These events attracted a broad range of people onto campus and GIBS captured the personal and business details of all these people and stored them in a database. This database has evolved and grown over time as more and more people have attended workshops, programmes and forums.

Now, when GIBS markets a programme, the database is mined for people who will have a direct interest and need for the programme in question. A database can be a source of competitive advantage for any company, large or small. Try to capture as many details as possible from as many customers as possible and store this information in an accessible database – the information will become incredibly useful sooner than you think.

Tactic: Create a system which records every customer’s details. If you are going to market to this list make sure you obtain the customer’s permission first.

15. Reward Great Customers

Exclusive Books is South Africa’s leading book retailer. One element of its marketing strategy is the Fanatics loyalty programme. All goods purchased qualify for points, each quarter members are awarded with Fanatics Rewards Vouchers which can be used to purchase more books.

This strategy keeps customers coming back to the stores again and again and rewards them for spending. Kauai Food and Juice offers a similar programme.

Purchase 12 smoothies and get one free. Ster-Kinekor has managed to dominate the South African cinema scene largely due to its movie club programme with low price movies and a free movie every so often for regular customers. What programme could you design to ensure that customers keep coming back again and again?

Tactic: Design a loyalty programme that rewards customers for purchasing from your company and provides an incentive to get them to come back.

Greg Fisher, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Management & Entrepreneurship Department at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. He teaches courses on Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Turnaround Management. He has a PhD in Strategy and Entrepreneurship from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington in Seattle and an MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). He is also a visiting lecturer at GIBS.

Henrico Hanekom describes himself as a “street wise marketer”. After attending to hundreds of clients’ individual marketing needs he has defined an unique approach that veers away from the traditional marketing agency methodology.

Like most Leaders whom firmly believe in positive transformation he has created “new blue waters” in the form of a niche service which he calls “Neuro-marketing”. Initially Henrico honed his skills as a founder and CEO of Megaphone Media, a company whom has served companies such as ABSA, Toyota McCarthy, AGSA (Auditor General of South-Africa), NRF (National Research Foundation)” by getting their message across utilising mainly digital visual media.

Roughly five years ago Henrico became a qualified Neuro-coach to empower him to answer a critical question: What can we learn from Neuroscience to improve marketing strategies in general? Henrico explained to me that normally all marketing campaigns aim to create a strong perception that will drive the consumers’ behaviour in a way that justifies the campaign spend, therefore at the root of an increased understanding of perpetual marketing principles lies behavioural sciences.

It is common knowledge that the average consumer faces severe cognitive overload considering the overwhelming amount of information available to us and the staggering amount of advertisements and marketing delivery mechanisms that people are exposed to in the modern world.

Increasingly marketing agencies are scratching their heads considering the complex question of: How do I make my clients stand out? A past reliable staple to secure results was to ensure high quality ad design underpinned by a very good offer to the public. That however might have worked occasionally during times when the market was not as saturated as it currently is.

Henrico passionately elaborated on his well-tested strategy to ensure that his clients are not only standing out but elevate their status to a market leader. He starts with a clean slate and encourages his clients to stop considering the competition. He refrains from giving advice and instead coaches within an environment where his clients can “discover their own genius”.

Through experience Henrico has discovered that it is common for companies to struggle with firstly defining their message clearly and secondly to clearly communicate their message to their audience. In general, a clearly communicated message that resonates with prospective client’s emotions and their personal values multiplies positive results, he shared.

Henrico further shared his experience to say that marketing and sales must be in alignment and that marketing is the DNA of the business, or put in another way, “Marketing is the communication of what is already within”. He has further found a general phenomenon amongst his clients in that their aspirations do not usually match their faith in their abilities to achieve. As a Neuro- coach Henrico then utilises Neuroscience and Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques to align his clients’ aspirations and belief in their abilities to powerful effect.

As a “Neuro- marketer” he assists his clients to rise to a high level of awareness so eloquently encapsulated by Albert Einsteins’ words of: “We cannot find a solution to a problem with the same level of awareness that created the problem. “

Henrico firmly believes in the Leadership principle of Authenticity and coaches his clients to authentically advertise the truth. Through all his expert efforts he aims to position each company that he works with as a “magnet” that strongly attracts clients as opposed to “pushing” and aggressively acquire each client.

The author ended this inspiring interview by asking Henrico what he is passionate about in life. Henricos’ sincere intent was tangible as his lips formed a smile from which his answer emenated: “Life was meant to be lived abundantly.” He also added that because life was meant to be lived without limits he is driven towards helping people to “get unstuck”. This man invests heavily into his own personal growth knowing that this long-term investment constantly empowers him to give the highest of himself to his clients.

Practical proof of Henricos’ commitment to personal growth was abundantly clear during and after the interview. The interview was done directly after Henricos’ workout and we drank (I will admit it was delicious) organic smoothies during it, and after the interview, we had a long and interesting discussion on personal development and servant leadership.

4 Ways To Reach A New Target Audience Without Abandoning Your Old One

For 56 years, Häagen-Dazs had a consistent message: high-quality, old-fashioned ice cream for sale. But that’s changed: Thanks largely to millennials, the company recently refreshed its brand with a revised logo, more vibrant packaging, new flavors and a global advertising campaign.

This younger generation of consumers is continuing to cause a massive shift in the market across all industries and sectors. That’s why this ice cream company wanted to cast off its stuffy, traditional image and connect with millennials over craftsmanship and storytelling.

There’s a lesson to be learned here: To stay competitive, any entrepreneur or business leader has to consider the many challenges of a constantly evolving business landscape, including his or her company’s demographics and consumer trends.

If you wait to consider how your audiences have changed and will continue to change, you’ll risk far more than will your competitors already investing in brand analysis and audience outreach.

Expanding your tent

Business leaders may be aware of the changing marketplace, but that doesn’t mean they’re eager to change. For many companies, a major brand overhaul often meets with internal resistance; and to be fair, such an overhaul is not always the right answer. For some companies, it’s better to maintain a consistent brand message amidst rapid change. It’s the discovery that’s important, the self-assessment, the long view.

Because we live in an experience-based economy, whether you’re designing your customer experience intentionally or not doesn’t matter: You’re still delivering one. Messaging plays a major role in reinforcing or diluting that experience.

Here are four steps you can take to help your business appeal to new demographics.

1. Develop robust personas

Every landing page, blog post or article you put out there should align with a distinct persona to effectively connect with a desired target audience. A CEO, a parent and a college student all require different messaging to inspire a response.

A seemingly obvious but often overlooked way to gain a better understanding of your current or potential customers’ needs is to ask them directly. Surveys can be effective, but personal, one-on-one interviews are better, even if you can only conduct a handful. Offer a small incentive to gather eager participants, and ask questions designed to reveal what motivates them and why they chose your product or service.

At Pharos, we need to shift our messaging to highlight the parts of our business that are relevant to each specific persona we target. We use three aspects of our value proposition to position ourselves in a way that aligns with what our audience cares about most. Print management solutions lower expenses (business owners love that), improve security (CIOs and IT directors love that) and boost sustainability (which should resonate with everyone). All three messages mutually reinforce one other and are consistent across experiences.

For example, we worked with one university’s leadership who wanted to reduce and manage back-office printing costs. To help get employees on board with secure print workflows, its leaders promoted the sustainability aspect of print management’s value proposition and subsequently were able to save $3,000 a month while significantly reducing the university’s carbon footprint.

2. Ask what your CRM data is trying to tell you

If your data collection process includes a wide range of questions to qualify leads, you should be able to find customer information such as company type and size, contact job titles and the types of content most often consumed.

Your sales team should then be able to help translate those numbers into concrete characteristics and create a more complete understanding of your customers. As you find common trends, you can combine those tendencies into a general view of each customer type, and use it to fill out your personas. This will help diversify your buyer personas and, consequently, your brand’s ability to connect with an expanding range of consumers.

Evaluating your data can also help you recognise surprising audiences that like your brand. When the small business software company Hatchbuckwas launched, its founders tried to reach as many segments as possible, from salespeople to business owners, to pitch its platform.

To zero in on its ideal customer, Hatchbuck gathered survey responses, crunched the numbers and conducted customer interviews, seeking to define its buyers’ behaviours and beliefs.

The company was surprised to learn that, even though it had been attracting larger companies looking for an affordable software with lots of features, smaller companies were its biggest supporters. Hatchbuck decided to focus its efforts on these small business owners – its ideal customer. Discoveries like this can be enlightening and critical to success.

3. Showcase how your brand delivers what people want

Proving your product’s relevance to a different demographic doesn’t mean abandoning the things that make it valuable to current buyers. It means adjusting your messaging to highlight the benefits that are more aligned with the new audience.

For example, Vera Bradley bags and luggagehave been a popular choice for baby boomer women since the 1980s. When the brand decided to expand its target audience and appeal to younger women, it tapped into social media to gain insights into the demographic and observed a trend of complaints among millennials about the shortcomings of smartphone battery life and the annoyance of awkward battery cases.

So Vera Bradley created a bag with a built-in smartphone charger. This helped to improve its offerings and reach a new audience without introducing change that might alienate its faithful, long-time customers.

4. Leverage the granularity of marketing automation

Many businesses see demographics as an aggregate average, but this perspective can destroy any chance of recognising the need to change. You don’t target youth through the same channels used to reach company decision-makers.

Approaching demographics using too broad of a viewpoint ignores the micro-targeting capability afforded by many marketing-automation systems today. Granular, personalised messaging is becoming the norm, not the exception.

To reach younger demographics with precision, take advantage of automation tools such as HubSpot, Marketo or Hatchbuck, proven technologies that can drastically improve the reach of your digital marketing ads and provide you with valuable analytics on your consumers.

These automation technologies have a long track record of producing a positive return on your investment. They can also help to improve various aspects of your digital marketing strategy. According to research by Regalix, 64 percent of marketers surveyed said they saw benefits within six months by using automation software.

The millennials in today’s workforce will be the decision-makers of tomorrow – and I mean tomorrow, not five years from now.

Organisations that fail to recognise this shift, or delay the process of discovering how best to change along with new demographic opportunities, can end up fueling internal resistance to such change and, ultimately, lose their opportunity to stay relevant.

6 Reasons Why Influencer Marketing Really Works

In today’s day and age you need to ensure your marketing spend is going to the right places and most importantly, that you’re getting the best bang for your buck.

Influencer marketing is a strategy that offers one of the highest returns on investment. Basically, influencer marketing is the process of identifying strategic individuals within your target market, and partnering with them to create advertising that is genuine and more palatable to the audience.

Google Trends show that the interest in influencer marketing is at an all-time high, and further studies demonstrate that personalised, word-of-mouth marketing is more than twice as effective as the alternatives.

Good customer reviews make the best marketing

The idea is pretty simple — instead of a brand telling you why their new product is so amazing, the good review comes from a popular and trusted individual. When an influencer or thought leader promotes your product or service to their audience, they’re essentially telling their audience “You trust me, and I trust this company.”

This form of advertising is becoming increasingly popular since audiences have already opted to receive this particular person’s opinions. It also puts a human touch to your marketing effort. Partnering with influencers makes your service more trustworthy and allows you to effortlessly reach a wider audience.

Influencer marketing has been identified as the most effective method of customer acquisition in 2016 and 2017, ahead of the likes of display advertising, email marketing, paid social media and traditional media.

92% of consumers turn to people they know for referrals above any other source.

Here are six reasons why influencer marketing works:

1It really does work

There are few things that drive a sale more effectively than word-of-mouth recommendations.

Studies show that trusted word-of-mouth recommendations generate more than twice the sales of paid advertising, and those that were acquired through word-of-mouth had a 37% higher retention rate.

2It’s social media friendly

The world and marketing have shifted to social media. 70% of brands are increasing their social media marketing spend in 2017.

Today, it’s easier to connect with other consumers via social media and make better purchasing decisions by learning about their experiences with a product or service.

Influencers are a force to be reckoned with; brands can strategically partner with the right personalities to spark organic conversations and seduce their followers.

3Cut through the clutter

According to research, the average social media user is exposed to 5 000 advertisements a day. Whether or not that number is scientifically proven, it gets the point across: We are exposed to a lot of ads.

Influencers are able to cut your brand through the clutter and get it straight to your target market’s eyes.

6It’s measurable

Probably the most important thing of all is that marketers and brand owners can actually track the success of their influencer marketing campaigns, unlike expensive TV, print and radio campaigns.

The digital world is different. Every website visit, social like, and picture posted online can be stored and analysed, giving you tons of data that turns into valuable insights about your target market and your advertising performance.

Influencer marketing presents a massive opportunity for brands to leverage the power of word-of-mouth at scale through personalities that consumers already follow and admire. The possibilities are endless, you’ll actually save marketing spend and guess what…? You can finally measure your results.